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April 14, 1984 makes it more than 35 years ago now. A crowded Pimlico Race Course winner’s circle in the rain. Muddy chestnut horse. Fourteen people. Mom, Dad, Sheila, Sean, Fee the Iranian van driver, owner George Strawbridge, his wife Nina, their kids Sanna and Stewart, super fan Reddy Stewart, super groom Lonnie Fuller, jockey Paul Nicol Jr. and a mostly hidden valet.
Calls to make. Calls to return. Bills to pay. Jobs to do. Stories to write. People to see. Answers to give. Questions to ask. Podcast episodes to schedule. E-mails to answer. Grass to cut. Kids to worry about. A plane to catch in a couple days. A knee that won’t stop swelling.
Life piling up all around you? Take five minutes and go see a horse.
Reading his obituary, I probably should have talked to Buck Kisor about money instead of horses and writing. But horses and writing it was.
At steeplechase meets, racetracks and associated events of one kind or another, I’d find myself talking shop with Kisor. He was a good listener, had sound opinions. He admired the product and the process of our newspaper Steeplechase Times. His horses, always at the lower end of the game, even made the pages of ST now and then. Lochnagar won at Middleburg in 1999, finished second four times in 2000 and 2001; Heir Apparent did OK; Sumo Power won twice at Tryon; Gather No Moss came through at Foxfield, and did it again at Morven Park, even placed in the timber stakes at Shawan Downs.
Chris Andrews never saw Evening Attire race, never knew the fit, determined, hard-trying racehorse. But she knew all about Evening Attire.
“The stall he is . . . was . . . in is the key stall right next to my office and he talked to me every morning and every night,” said Andrews, executive director of Akindale Thoroughbred Rescue where Evening Attire lived out his retirement for the last 10 years. Andrews talked back because, well of course she did. Horses like Evening Attire make you talk to them. On the racetrack, he won nine graded stakes, earned just shy of $3 million and won legions of fans while making 69 starts over nine seasons. He died Sunday of colic, leaving a big hole at Akindale.
Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop . . . the hoofbeats closed in as I crossed Union Avenue toward the Oklahoma stable area at Saratoga Race Course. About halfway across, I looked back and a big-but-little bay horse was on my heels and closing in.
He reminded me of a first-grader at recess on the first day of school. Unsure. Shaky. Lost in a “I’ve-never-been here-before” way.
“Come on, you can do it,” I found myself instinctively saying.
Dennis Forney. Trish Vernon. Vicki Davis. Mike Short. Lon Wagner. Kathy Emery. Gina whose last name I can’t remember. Deny Howeth. Chris Wildt. Cat Tanzer. Don Herring. Terry Peddicord. David Healey. Adam Wolle. Bill Hughes. Cheryl Mattix. Jon Springer. Drew Ostroski. Jeff James. Jeff Swinger. Butch Comegys. Anthony Farina. Jim DeCourcy. Wendy Gilbert. Joy whose last name I can’t remember. Craig Horleman. Jeff Gentry. Jane Thomas. Barb Tidman. And . . .
I owe my career to Gene Weymouth. No, really. Well, kind of. And if you spit out your coffee at that statement I’m sorry. Get a napkin.
Creased, scratched, faded, turned up on the corners and with a dime-sized hole in the center of the cover photo, the magazine saw plenty in its 44 years. But nobody had seen it for five years, maybe more, until Jack Clancy opened a plastic container in an unused room in my Fair Hill office last month.
Back in the 1980s at the University of Delaware’s student-run newspaper The Review, I didn’t cover the football team. I went to field hockey games, lacrosse games, the occasional baseball game, a basketball game or two (the team was usually woeful), some wrestling matches, a few swim meets.
Abstain, abstain, abstain.
If you’re paying attention to Eclipse Award votes this time of year, you’ll read that a lot. Voters and other interested racing fans will post their ballots for Thoroughbred racing’s annual championships and many will decline to vote in the champion steeplechaser category (instead typing Abstain in the first, second and third choice boxes). Not everyone, but many. The abstentions topped 40 individual voters in each of the past three years and will likely do so again this time around.
